It is impossible to charge a fee large enough to recoup costs of certain smells.

Many years ago, when I worked at a hotel catering to long term stays, a portion of the clientele used to be Indian families working for TCS/Infosys/Cognizant/Gentech/etc. Their rooms were automatically put out of order for 2 to 3 weeks after their anticipated departure date, because there was a sufficiently high probability it would need significant time to air out and probably carpet shampooing and other remedies.

At $150+ per night of lost revenue, no one would be willing to pay damages, and smells leave no conclusive evidence that will let you win any damages in court.

Solution was to amortize these costs over all hotel guests, just like any other externalities caused by other hotel guests.

Obviously, if you do not have volume, then you can greatly reduce your expenses by avoiding certain risks, which manifest as deciding not to rent to someone who you think has a high probability of costing you more money to rehabilitate the dwelling for subsequent rentals.

> impossible to charge a fee large enough to recoup costs of certain smells

Why? Hotels that permit pets frequently have astronomical my-pet-peed fees. The point of the fee is less to be charged and more to signal that someone shouldn’t take the room if that’s a probability.

It is rare that a hotel guest will pay the fee. Credit/debit cards forbid merchants from collecting for damages, so unless you have a signature signed or nowadays EMV chip approved transaction from the guest for the specific amount of the fee, they can simply do a chargeback and get their money back.

The next option is court, but of course, proving a specific person caused a specific damage in a hotel is also near impossible without spending too much in legal costs. Pets are always a headache for hotels because the probability of the pet causing high dollar amount damage is so high. Scratches and whatnot on furniture, ripping carpet, peeing and pooping. Replacing furniture and carpet and whatnot easily gets into thousands of dollars. I know the hotel I worked at made a loss on pets even though pet fees were collected.

>The point of the fee is less to be charged and more to signal that someone shouldn’t take the room if that’s a probability.

Yes, just like smoking fees. You basically have to re-floor and repaint the walls and probably replace all the furniture and fixtures to undo long term effects of cigarette smoke to a dwelling. Hence why any decent hotel will do mandatary semi weekly or at least weekly checks of all hotel rooms (regardless if the guest has a do or disturb sign).

Anytime you allow someone on your premises, you introduce all sorts of risks, and getting rid of them is not as simple as calling the police, especially when tenancy rights get involved such as with hotels. So if you want to stay in business, you have to be proactive on monitoring against these risks.

Hence the use of credit card security deposits as discrimination against those who have no credit cards. It is the most effective way to reduce your probability of having to incur huge costs from problematic hotel guests.

I doubt a mandate like that would be possible. Especially stating curry directly. They already aren't allowed to damage the place, but proving its a "damage" is probably the hard part. And typically they are already placing a deposit to cover any potential damages.

I had a rental for a while and there was extras for pets, but I do not think you could really do it for anything else. There was a 'pet fee' of like $1-200 per pet to cover carpet cleaning and such. Then an additional 'pet deposit' of half a month rent, on top of the main deposit of a month of rent. The fee was kept no matter what, and then the deposit was there to cover any additional damage like scratches and such.

You might be able to claim lingering smells, no matter what they were caused by, as damages to keep their deposit. Still a lot that could go wrong with it. As you might already have a new tenant lined up, and once they move in good luck proving in court the smells were from the previous tenant. Or you have to leave it vacant for some time to get it cleaned, costing income.

Edit: Just speculating based on my experience in the US. Mostly VA and NC. Obviously could be very different elsewhere in the world.

For what it's worth, I specifically remember that a rental contract I once signed in London (Southwark, in a council housing building) mentioned that it was specifically forbidden to cook curry. I laughed at the provision back then, not fully understanding why it's there, but of course now this all makes sense.

I always thought of it probably not being enforceable anyway.

It's weird, but probably not illegal. If they can mandate you not to smoke then this should not be a problem.

Getting a smell out of a place is not possible with cleaning and ventilation. It eats into everything, you need to paint again and possibly get rid of furniture.